


Regrets Collect Like Old Friends

by FiliTheLionKing (IAmYourWatson)



Series: The God of Poetry and the God of Death [2]
Category: Being Human (UK), The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gods!AU, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Mitchell Is Donn (Lord of the Dead), Mitchell is secretly a big softie, Mitchell's job as Donn, Please heed the tags if you're sensitive!, Sad Mitchell Is Sad, Scary former vampire with a big heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 08:45:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmYourWatson/pseuds/FiliTheLionKing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mitchell has been the mortal vessel of Donn, Celtic Lord of the Dead, for six months now. He's gotten used to the job, but it seems he'll never get used to some of the things it entails. Most people know that Mitchell can be kind and sweet when he wants to be, and Anders knows for sure that he can be the world's biggest sap behind closed doors. And with the exception of the aforementioned God of Poetry, no one really knows how deeply Mitchell feels things. </p><p>When confronted with a literal ghost from his past, Mitchell must reassess just how much his heart can break, and how good he really is at hiding it from himself. A look into Mitchell's job as the mortal vessel of Donn and keeper of the dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regrets Collect Like Old Friends

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! Hope you all have been doing well! Here's the next installment of my Gods!AU, wherein we get a glimpse into Mitchell's newest job and all that it entails. Title taken from Florence + The Machine's "Shake It Out".

For the last six months, John Mitchell, former vampire and blood addict, has been the mortal vessel of Donn, Celtic Lord of the Dead. One might think that this was a rather shitty job to be saddled with, being the keeper of the god of the dead’s soul and having to guide the fallen to their rest whenever they came close enough, but Mitchell wasn’t complaining. He’d spent enough time around dead people to not be phased by it. That, and since he was now a mortal living with the love of his life (all three of them; lives, not lovers), he really thought he was getting the better end of the deal. Still, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t low points.

 

Like today. Consider this: you’re walking along, it’s about six o’clock in the morning, and you’ve just gotten off the night shift at your local hospital. You’ve had a long night of cleaning up blood and puke and other less than savory substances, with your only consolation being that the blood doesn’t bother you the way it once did (as in, it doesn’t make you hungry) and that your incredibly sexy lover currently lies naked in bed waiting for you. So, you’re walking home, feeling dirty and nasty and rather put out, your tired eyes barely staying open as you round the corner and see your home in the distance. Finally, you think, I get to have a shower, drink some coffee, and get in bed and fuck the living daylights out of my handsome man. Things are looking up, right? 

It seems that Mitchell’s unwanted penchant for trouble and unfair situations had carried over from his previous lives and into this one. 

Mitchell had met his fair share of hopeless cases in his lifetimes. Drug addicts, self-harmers, abuse victims, handicapped veterans, and so on, he’d met so many people with sadder stories than his own that he figured he was inured to it. He was wrong more often than not, but he liked to keep his feelings close to his chest when it came to anything other than laughter and rage. So to most people he presented a calm, almost cold front to those in the lowest points of despair, unless they were children, of course. Rarely had he let someone get under his skin, the few who were still alive being George and Anders. There was someone else too, a boy named Joshua, whom he’d met some time ago in Bristol, long before he moved to New Zealand.

Joshua was a kind boy, someone who could light up a room just by being there in it. He was tall but thin, with big blue eyes and bright red hair, a strange mix of Irish and German ancestry. He’d been working for the hospital for several months before Mitchell met him. Well, that was wrong, Mitchell  _had_  met him before, but only in passing, since they worked in different areas of the place. Mitchell was cleaning, and Joshua was a nurse’s aid. The former vampire knew all about addiction; he’d suffered through over a century of it, and he knew better than to hold himself any higher than those who suffered from drug or alcohol addictions. So he commiserated with Joshua, rather than judged him, when he found out that the little ray of sunshine was a morphine addict.

He never found out just  _why_  Joshua needed the morphine. He wasn’t in any pain, he didn’t have any injuries past or present that could have led him to need the addictive drug. Mitchell wasn’t a close friend of Joshua’s either, so he’d never been privy to his innermost thoughts, and for the most part, that suited Mitchell just fine. Perhaps if he’d made more of an effort, he could have understood why Joshua did what he did. As it was, Mitchell only heard secondhand when the cheerful boy had been fired after being caught stealing morphine from the hospital’s pharmacy a few months before the vampire met Anders. While the vampire hadn’t been especially fond of the boy, he wan’t exactly ambivalent towards him either. He liked that the kid always had a smile on, and always seemed to be able to bring out one in those around him, even a mopey old vampire like himself. Mitchell was a little saddened, but he never told anyone, and he soon forgot about the redheaded boy when he met his true sunshine, the blonde that currently waited for him at home. 

The reason why Mitchell wasn’t currently walking towards his home was fairly simple: he’d just seen a ghost. No, not in the funny, ‘oh my gosh I haven’t seen you in forever kind of way’, but the ‘he’s actually dead’ way. Standing a few feet before him was Joshua, his hair as bright red as it had always been, but the rest of him was so different from when Mitchell had last seen him that he almost didn’t recognize the boy. What had once been pale but healthy white skin had become grayish and somewhat sagging, his eyes lined by dark bags and bruises, his lip split and his knuckles wrapped in bandages. What had once been pristine blue nurse’s scrubs were now ragged and torn, dirt and blood and other nasty substances covering it to the point where the real color was barely visible. In short, Joshua looked like death warmed over, and now, he truly was dead. 

There wasn’t a way to tell a ghost from a living person, unless you were another supernatural, and then you tended to just  _know_. Given that Mitchell was now Donn, he knew instinctively that this was a ghost, a dead soul that needed guidance to the other side. No doors were visible nearby, meaning one of two things: one, that Joshua had only just died, and the door simply had yet to arrive, or two, that Joshua had unfinished business that still needed attending to. Somehow, and he blamed Donn for this, Mitchell knew that it was option number one. He also knew, thanks to Donn, that Joshua had died, not here, but in London. So what was his soul doing here, then?

 _"He does not believe in the Christian god, as you once did, Mitchell. He was a pagan, one of the many reasons why he needed to turn to morphine. As you well know, there are still those out there who would commit terrible acts against those of another religion, simply because they believe in something different."_ Donn whispered to Mitchell, his mind echoing with the cacophony of a thousand dead voices. 

The former vampire sighed, knowing that he wouldn’t be going to sleep anytime soon. He’d have to open a door for this poor soul and see him safely through his door to the other side, no matter what awaited him. He noticed that Joshua was staring at him with something akin to surprise, and if it wasn’t for how hollow and sad his eyes were, Mitchell would have expected him to smile. With another sigh, Mitchell walked forwards until he was face-to-face with the boy. The lad’s forearms were covered in blood, some of it beading from obvious track marks where he’d injected his morphine doses, while the rest came from the deep cuts on his wrists. If it weren’t for the years he’d spent seeing gruesome and terrifying things, Mitchell might have fainted at the sight. As it was, he was all too used to blood and gore, and he gently rested a hand on Joshua’s shoulder.

"Hello, Joshua." His voice was kind, as well as sad. He’d hoped to never see the lad again, if only because that would mean that the boy was still alive and well, hopefully. Now he knew better, and it broke his heart. 

"Mitchell? Man, what are you doin’ here?" The boy’s thick accent fluctuated, moving between his native Irish brogue and his more recent soft London accent tempering his birth accent. "Why am I in…this place? I thought I was dead!"

"…You are, kid." Mitchell smiled sadly, patting the boy’s shoulder. "This is New Zealand, but you  _are_  dead. I’m…well, it would take a long time to explain. The short version is, I’m here to take you over to the other side.” The brunet waved a hand, and a door appeared in a brick wall nearby. It was white, and the vessel breathed a sigh of relief; Joshua wasn’t destined for hell. Even though he was a pagan, it was obvious that the former nurse had been raised by Catholic parents, and sometimes that carried over, even into death. “Come on, this way. Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?”

The redhead nodded, looking a little dazed, and didn’t question it when Mitchell led him towards the door that had magically appeared in the otherwise solid wall. The vessel opened it and ushered Joshua in, closing it behind them, knowing that the door had disappeared as soon as it was shut. They stood in a rather short corridor, the carpet soft and a cheery red, the walls covered in an old-fashioned wallpaper. At the opposite end was a doorway, an antique, rustic-looking thing, with a golden doorknob and brass accents on the hinges. Beyond was the faint strings of harp music, but not the angelic kind; more like the dulcimers that Mitchell used to hear played at festivals when he was younger. He turned to Joshua and smiled at him, noticing that the boy looked healthier and warmer again, his clothes clean and the track marks and blood gone from his arms. 

"…Where are we?" Joshua asked quietly, his voice stronger as well, not the reedy thing it had been when he’d first shown up in front of the former vampire. 

"This…is a corridor. A passage into the afterlife. Y’see that door at the end?" Mitchell gestured at it, and the boy nodded. "That’s the door to your afterlife. I’m not sure what’s beyond it; I can’t exactly follow you there, it’s against the rules, but what I can tell you is that it’s your reward, the good kind of afterlife. I dunno what religion you had, if any, but it’ll be something to do with that, I suppose." He smiled reassuringly at Joshua, noticing that the boy had tears in his eyes. "Hey, why the long face?"

"….You didn’t die too, did you?" Joshua asked quietly, his eyes concerned. That was one of the things Mitchell had always liked about the lad; he was always worried about everyone else, even to the point of forgetting about himself and his needs. He was a good soul, so it was no wonder that he’d managed to land himself in heaven, or wherever it was he was going. 

"Nah, I didn’t. Not really. It’s a lot to explain, like I said. You’ll probably figure it out when you get there, just ask around, I’m sure you’ll meet others who’ve had a similar experience or somethin’." 

Joshua laughed, and Donn’s powers supplied that it was the first time the nurse’s aid had genuinely laughed in almost a year. Whatever had driven him to suicide must have been extremely horrible, and again, Mitchell felt his heart shatter a little bit. “Ah, I think I get what yer sayin’. You’ve got someone t’go home to, don’t ya?” The redhead grinned, taking Mitchell’s hand. “I’ve seen that look before, Mitchell. I’m sorry to have bothered ya.”

"It’s no trouble at all, Joshua." Mitchell smiled, glad that the saddest part of his job was over. Convincing the dead that yes, in fact, they  _were_  dead was always difficult, even more so if they were young and thought that they had all the time in the world. Joshua hadn’t been one of those people, thankfully, but it had drained the last of Mitchell’s emotional strength to come across a boy he’d known and liked and to have to see him at the end of what was obviously a painful life.

"Aye, I’m glad, but you should probably be getting home. Yer a lucky one, and whoever y’got at home is luckier. I…I know we didn’t talk much, but I always knew you were different." Mitchell stifled a sigh and a laugh; if only Joshua knew  _how_  much different he really was at the time, the boy would probably freak out. “And I’m glad to have met you. And…thanks, for being here. It’s nice to see a familiar face after…well, you know, and before, well…you also know!” Joshua’s grin grew larger as he pulled Mitchell in for a hug. The former vampire was surprised; rarely did any of the dead touch him, much less  _hug_  him for leading them to their rest. Still, it eased his heart a bit, and he returned the hug with as much enthusiasm as Joshua gave it. 

"Go on, then. Say hello to whoever it is for me." Joshua beamed as he let Mitchell go. Taking a deep breath, he nodded, obviously steeling himself for the biggest change of his afterlife. The redhead turned and slowly, calmly, walked down the short hall and to his door. Grasping the handle, he turned and gave a final wave goodbye to Mitchell, before grinning and turning the handle. A bright flash of light, and Mitchell was standing back on the sidewalk, his home in sight. A quick look at his watch confirmed what he already knew: the encounter had lasted a mere few seconds in the real world, and no one would have seen him appear and disappear with a ghost. A perk, if you will, of the job. 

A bird chirped from a nearby tree as the sun began to rise over the hills. Soon there would be cars rattling by on the street, and people would start to wake up, the night shifters heading home as the daytimers made their way into the world. Across the street, a café opened its shutters, the sign lighting up to say ‘Open!’. In the distance, he heard a window opening, a sprinkler system turning on, the laughter of a street crew working on the pavement a block over. It was nice, to be reminded of the simple things in life after spending any amount of time in tune with death. He’d spent so long in the darkness and shadows that he’d learned to appreciate the smaller things that life had to offer.

Mitchell snickered, turning away from the cafe sign and walking briskly towards his house. Anders would kill him if he knew that Mitchell referred to him as one of the ‘smaller things’ he appreciated in life. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette, then rolled his eyes as he remembered that he’d thrown out his last pack a week ago. After his close call, Anders had insisted that they  _both_  were going to cut down on their vices; after all, you only got to cheat death twice, as Mitchell had proved. They wanted a long lifetime together, and it wasn’t going to make itself easy to attain. Shrugging, he placed his hands in his jacket pockets and kept on heading home, smiling when he saw the light on in the kitchen window and smelled food on the burner.   _  
_

It looked like a coffee-and-eggs kind of morning.

**Author's Note:**

> I love getting to explore a character's feelings and modus operandi, especially those that I haven't roleplayed before or thought that I'd want to write about. Mitchell's grown on me over the months, and so I wanted to try my hand at writing about his motives. Hope I'm doing him justice! Obviously, this is an AU, so if he's a little OOC, it can be explained away, but I don't want him to drift too far from his original character. How am I doing? 
> 
> Comments and critiques always welcome! Thanks for reading! The Lioness is going to go sleep now, sweet dreams!


End file.
